WITH the process of admission to universities having started in Karachi, students are being advised to submit domicile and permanent residence certificate (PRC) along with other documents. I along with my son visited the deputy commissioner’s (DC) office in the central district for the issuance of these documents.

There was no official to explain the procedure for submitting the forms, fees and the application for the two documents. On someone’s advice, I approached an agent outside the DC office who told me I would have to submit 15 attested documents, including the computerised national identity cards (CNICs) of father and mother, National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) verification, copies of utility bills, attested copies of all education-related documents of the applicant, attested copies of CNICs of two neighbours and bank challan of Rs350. I agreed and provided him all the copies of relevant documents and he did the needful.

Although the working hours of government offices are from 8am to 4pm, no staff was available till 9.30am, though there was a long queue of worried students and their parents outside the office.

Domicile is a documentary proof of permanent residence for citizens, which was enforced in 1952 under Section 17 and Rule 23 of the Pakistan Citizenship Act, 1952. According to the law, an applicant of domicile must be a resident of Pakistan for a period no less than one year and intends to live permanently in Pakistan.

Serious complaints of corruption, bribery, forgery and issuance of fake domicile are common. Due to this, academic careers of talented students are being destroyed.

The PRC was introduced in Sindh in 1971 under the PRC Rules of 1971, and this was not a legislative Act, but an administrative order. Under this rule, a citizen having permanent residence in Sindh for a three-year period becomes eligible for PRC. Surprisingly, this law, among all provinces, is applicable only in Sindh.

I am unable to understand the legal justification for a parallel system which requires domicile and PRC as proof of being a citizen when we have CNICs and other Nadra identification documents.

In principle, after the establishment of Nadra, domicile and PRC should not be required the way Punjab government has abolished the old system, deciding that the permanent address in the CNIC will be considered the domicile. It seems that the Sindh government is deliberately ignoring this important issue that is being faced by thousands of students in the province. The CNIC is a comprehensive identity document issued after extensive verifications.

The Sindh government should follow the Punjab example, and make CNIC the sole document for determining the citizenship and the residence status of a person.

Israr Ayoubi
Karachi

Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2022